Resource Allocation in the Cloud: From Simulation to Experimental Validation

With cloud computing, the efficient management of resources is of great importance as an increased utilization of the available resources can result in higher scalability and significant energy and cost reductions. Experimental validation of novel resource management strategies is costly and time consuming, and often requires in-depth knowledge of and control over the underlying cloud platform. As a result, many novel strategies are only evaluated by means of simulations, in which the whole cloud computing environment is modelled and simulated. Nonetheless, experimental validation should also be considered during the validation, as these types of experiments can often result in new insights or they can be used to fine-tune some specific parameters. In this paper we present a general approach for the experimental validation of cloud resource management strategies, together with the introduction of a cloud testbed adapter which was designed to facilitate the step from simulations towards experimental validation on physical cloud testbeds. We illustrate our solution by means of two case studies, focusing on two different types of testbeds. The adapter mainly acts as a dispatcher towards specific services of the evaluated cloud setup, and allows researchers to easily validate their ideas without having to dive deep into the complex details of the underlying cloud platform.